Tag Archive: Hannah Simone

The good news? The networks all have released previews of their new Fall TV series. The bad news? Most of the trailers play-out pretty flat–look for more of the same bland, dry, typical attempts at the next best Emmy-winning drama and the same brand of network comedy. We showed you previews for three new series from CBS last week (here) for shows we think might be worth giving a shot: the reboot of Magnum, p.i., the return of Murphy Brown, and the Dick Wolf series FBI with Law & Order’s Jeremy Sisto and the DCU’s Connie Nielsen.

We were looking forward to New Girl’sHannah Simone starring in a reboot of The Greatest American Hero, but ABC rejected the series after the pilot was filmed. Forever and Law & Order’sAlana de la Garza‘s series Chiefs, and Timothy Hutton in Main Justice are still expected from CBS. What We Do in the Shadows is a werewolf-zombie comedy starring Doug Jones coming from FX. HBO is expected to launch a series called Camping with David Tennant, Ione Skye, and Juliette Lewis. And Showtime has City on a Hill with Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, and Jill Hennessy, Ball Street with Don Cheadle, and Kidding with Jim Carrey, Catherine Keener, and Frank Langella. But we’ve seen no trailers for these series yet.

Putting aside the ongoing series being continued between now and year end, several new series with trailers now released may be of interest based on actors who have previously acted in genre series, so we’re going to run down those that may be worth at least a viewing of the first episode.

Here are the other new series, the genre actors you might want to know about, followed by the trailers for Fall 2018:

Thirty years later that little punk you wanted to crane-kick in the head is back, but he may very well be a different person as an adult. Take yourself back to the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, where Daniel LaRusso proved he had the right stuff against Johnny Lawrence after the infamous “sweep the leg” gave Daniel the mojo he needed to win the trophy, after learning some lessons in karate–and life–courtesy of Mr. Miyagi.

Ten half-hour episodes of a new comedy-drama are “in the can” for the series Cobra Kai, featuring the return of Ralph Macchio as Daniel and William Zabka as Johnny from the original The Karate Kid. Johnny is reopening the bad-guy’s dojo-with-no-mojo Cobra Kai, and Daniel LaRusso is not happy about it. But the positions are somewhat shifted this time around, as Johnny serves as sensei to a kid bullied by his peers, just as Daniel was bullied back in 1984.

Macchio sums it up, playing at our own surprise with this reboot in the first teaser for the series, saying, “I just don’t know why you’d ever want to bring back Cobra Kai,” to Johnny. A decade ago I discussed a similar effort to re-launch a series with its original actors at San Diego Comic-Con. I spoke with William Katt and Robert Culp about their efforts to bring The Greatest American Hero back. They couldn’t make it work, but only last week a reboot was announced for that show, with New Girl co-star Hannah Simone taking on the powers of the suit. But the leads from The Karate Kid are getting their wish. Unfortunately the great Pat Morita, who played Mr. Miyagi, passed away in 2005. Morita was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for his work on the original film. And there’s no word yet on whether Martin Kove will make an appearance as Johnny’s original sensei.

If you want to know why three cast members of the Fox TV series New Girl were up for Emmys last year, just get a copy of New Girl: The Complete Second Season, now available on DVD. With yet another episode last night, New Girl is still cranking out laughs in its third season every Tuesday night. New Girl has become the surest way to get a quick dose of laugh-out-loud humor on network or cable television. The only frustrating thing about New Girl is that each episode is less than half an hour, and it always feels like it is over too fast. And that makes it that much more fun to watch 25 episodes at a few hours per viewing with the DVD set.

Season Two finally saw series star Zooey Deschanel’s Jess hook up with Jake Johnson’s Nick, the poster boy for the lazy post-college set. Deschanel was nominated for leading actress in a comedy series for her work in Season Two and it’s no wonder–she’s fun, quirky, and smart. Season Two also saw Max Greenfield’s performance as Schmidt nominated for best supporting actor in a comedy series. It’s hard to think of the last actor that worked as hard as Greenfield does for a laugh, finding himself constantly in the most embarrassing and over-the-top circumstances. Deschanel and Greenfield have made themselves actors to watch for whether in TV appearances (Deschanel in Bones and Weeds, Greenfield in Veronica Mars and Castle) or in movies (Deschanel in Elf and The Happening).